


stuck quite tight

by couldaughter



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Crack, M/M, Multi, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 14:17:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13976874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter/pseuds/couldaughter
Summary: There is a sandwich lying in the centre of the team logo on the locker room floor.“Is this why we’re not meant to walk on it?” Sonny asks, looking speculatively at the three separate piles of clothes circling the sandwich and also, obviously, the silver star.





	stuck quite tight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [escherzo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/escherzo/gifts).



> gotta be more specific with those bb&c prompts chris or you get this monstrosity

There is a sandwich lying in the centre of the team logo on the locker room floor. A slice of bread, crunchy peanut butter, strawberry jelly, and to top it off one last slice of bread. 

This should not be a huge issue, except for the fact that three of Nick’s team are missing and were last seen entering this very locker room in search of Luc’s phone, and now all that's left of them is... well.

“Is this why we’re not meant to walk on it?” Sonny asks, looking speculatively at the three separate piles of clothes circling the sandwich and also, obviously, the silver star.

Nick shrugs. “God knows. I may be captain but the magic stuff is Bob’s job.” He gestures towards Bob’s stall, which has a decal of a wizard’s hat stuck at approximately head height. “He’s got the wall sticker and everything.”

Zach, who has taken to tagging along after Sonny just in case of accidents, peers at the decal with some interest. “Is that an elected position?”

“No,” said Nick. “You have to ritually sacrifice a PB&J to the hockey gods and then bam, the sticker appears in your stall.” With a sigh of exquisite annoyance, he pressed his thumb and forefinger into the bridge of his nose. “Can you call him? My phone’s busted, probably because of some magic bullshit, and we really need to get that sandwich off the logo before Torts sees.”

Torts is not a fan of locker room magic, to put it mildly, despite the fact that he definitely used magic to rip out the Flames’ mascot’s tongue that one time. Those costumes are enchanted for a reason.

Bob turns up within fifteen minutes, holding a tray of coffee cups and looking annoyingly well rested for ten fifteen on a Saturday.

“Good morning,” he says, handing Nick a coffee with a smile. “I hear there is a… sandwich problem?” 

He tilts his head. It’s cute, but sadly Nick is too wound up over the possibility of three of his teammates being a sandwich that he can’t appreciate the moment.

“Yes,” he says, pointing in the direction of the offending lunch item. “I thought it was a prank, but the clothes thing is kind of weird, right? And it’s about dead fuckin’ centre on that logo.”

“Spooky,” Bob observes, before taking a sip of coffee. Sonny and Zach are watching him warily, probably because they’re worried he’s about to give them a pig tail, because they’re five years old. “I feel a real magical… hm.” He pauses, taking another sip of coffee. “What is the word for when something is gone, but a little bit is still there?”

“Uh,” says Nick, intelligently. “Residue?”

“That works,” Bob replies. “Yes, magical residue. Lots of magic done here about, oh, ninety minutes ago?”

Because Nick’s day is apparently still capable of getting worse, the sandwich wiggles.

“Right,” says Bob. If he’s about to have a conversation with the sandwich, Nick is actually going to break. He’s going to leave the team and live in a cave in Alberta, eating only walnuts and never setting his eyes on two slices of bread slapped around a filling ever again.

Bob is pulling a number of complicated looking objects from his bag, made of glass and copper and other wizard-ish materials. There is a book Nick recognises, at least, although only because he saw it in a local bookstore once as part of a Halloween display on practical witchcraft. It has a brown leather cover and plastic gemstones set into it, but Book Smugglers claimed it had a lot of good content.

Which is why Nick gave it to Bob for Christmas. It’s nice to see he’s getting some use out of it, at least, even if it felt kind of like a gag gift at the time.

“Need a hand?” Nick asks, feeling somewhat unmoored from reality.

“Oh, yes, thank you,” says Bob, before handing Nick an unreasonably heavy set of scales. “Yes, I think I see this spell once before. In training,” he adds over his shoulder, presumably addressing Sonny and Zach. The two of them are clearly trying to sit as far away as possible, but given the limitations of the space-time continuum they’re actually only about eight feet away, at the opposite side of the locker room. “Where I learn how to do _magic_.”

“You two,” Bob continues, in a voice Nick hasn’t heard him use before. “Come hold this for me.” When the two of them creep over, he hands them a very large telescope that he somehow pulled out of his hipster messenger bag.

“What’s that for?” Nick asks. Sonny and Zach are too busy looking confused to pay attention to the conversation, which is probably for the best.

“Nothing,” replies Bob, cheerfully. “I am just thinking it will be funny if they drop it when I fix this.” He waves at the sandwich with his left hand which is, abruptly, holding a wand.

This is a little much for Nick to process, but not so much that he isn’t willing to go along with it for a while longer. To be honest, he didn’t have any plans for the day, so participating in a sandwich ritual is actually an upgrade.

“What would you like me to do with these?” He continues, holding the scales carefully aloft.

“Well,” says Bob, in a tone which promises nothing. “Just hold them, and you will find out!”

Which is neither comforting nor informative, but that’s kind of Bob’s deal with magic and, occasionally, goaltending, so Nick can’t really blame anyone but himself for expecting a more concrete answer.

Bob smiles at him again, which is once again not very comforting, turns back towards the logo, and raises his wand.

Nick’s never been very good with magic. His mom was a minor witch, could do a few low level spells and tried to teach him the useful ones, but he’d never had much time for it when he could be at hockey practice, or playing N64 with Cara, or a million other things kids think are more important than spending time with your mom.

Nowadays he regrets it, but magic is the kind of thing you need to instill in childhood, really. Gotta form those pathways early, before the brain’s fully developed. 

Adults have trouble with it because of the whole brain hemorrhage thing, besides the fact it can fuck up consumer electronics faster than you can say ‘oh shit, turn off your ph-’.

Bob is saying something long and complex in Latin, or at least Nick assumes it’s Latin based on a B in high school Spanish, and Nick can feel the molecules in the air shivering. 

It’s kind of the worst physical sensation ever, but it’s over almost before he can blink

Bob lowers his hands and grins. On the logo, looking incredibly put out, Luc, Josh and Panarin are sat, thankfully clothed, lightly stained with peanut butter and jelly.

Nick blinks, then matches Bob’s grin. “Okay, I feel like this story is gonna be really good.”

Bob nods, and mutters something under his breath. All his various instruments fly back into his back, because of course they do, before he swings it onto his shoulder, apparently unaffected by probably a hundred pounds of copper and glass.

“Alright,” says Sonny, blinking slowly. “We definitely all saw that?”

“Yeah,” says Zach, who has shifted his facial expression from mild confusion to mild delight. “Josh,” he continues, stepping forward to offer him a hand up. “I hope you know… you’re never living this down.”

“Worth it,” Josh says, in a voice which implies beautiful and terrible things.

Nick really doesn’t want to know what they were doing that apparently offended the hockey gods enough to turn them into staple foods, but he has a pretty solid guess and - well, he’s glad he already doesn’t walk on the logo.

“Come on,” he says, in his best captainly tones. “You three can buy us lunch.” He glances sideways at Luc, Josh and Artemi. “Whatever you were doing in here, you probably owe Dubi like a thousand dollars in fines, so…”

“Oh, god,” says Luc, finally looking concerned. He scrubbed at a thin layer of jelly on his cheek. “The _fines_.”

Josh pats him consolingly on the back. Panarin, more or less confirming Nick’s suspicions, pats him on the ass.

“Think of it this way,” says Bob, a little later, while they’re eating decent sushi at a place downtown. “At least no one ate the sandwich.”

Nick concedes. "That would definitely have been worse."

**Author's Note:**

> look there is really no defence for this. chris i'm so sorry. three men in this story are made into a sandwich by the genius loci of nationwide arena
> 
> there's nothing i can say except that the title is from a poem by shel silverstein, because as it turns out it's really difficult to title a crack fic about sandwiches


End file.
